secondary schools equivalent to either the English Grammar or Technical School. Their Secondary Modern School, however, resembles our high school in that it is an unselective school catering to a rather broad range of ability levels. It differs from our high school in that the top 30 percent of the ability range is absent from among its pupils since they are attending the Grammar School or the Technical School. Secondary Modern pupils usually range from IQ 110 down to about IQ 80. There are special schools in England for those below IQ 80; these are called "educationally subnormal" or ESN.

METHOD OF ASSIGNMENT TO SECONDARY SCHOOLS

For England as a whole about 25 percent of 11-year-olds are placed in Grammar, 5 percent in Technical Schools. These are overall percentages, and there are local variations. Assignment to a given type of secondary school is the responsibility of the Local Education Authorities. In some localities Grammar or Technical School places are scarce and talent is abundant, while the reverse will be true in other areas. This creates geographic inequalities in the selection process. Some children cannot get into Grammar School even though they have the requisite ability; others get in who would fit better into Secondary Modern.

Such inequalities are contrary to the intent of the 1944 Education Act which stipulates that placement in secondary school is to be entirely a matter of what is "appropriate to children's capacities." Under the terms of the act, the local education authorities are obligated to provide secondary schools—

sufficient in number, character, and equipment to afford for all pupils opportunities of education offering such variety of instruction and training as may be desirable, in view of their different ages, abilities, and aptitudes, and of the different periods for which they may be expected to remain at school.

Not all Local Education Authorities, by any means, have been able to carry out their obligation to provide "sufficient numbers" of the required secondary schools or to equip and staff all of them adequately, though not for want of effort. The postwar years have been difficult for England. Despite heavy taxation, public funds have been inadequate to finance the many pressing needs that had to be taken care of. Extensive war damage has had to be repaired. A variety of new public services demanded by the electorate have had to be provided. There has been too much to do and too little to do it with. În education, sudden expansion always creates a scarcity of places in the higher schools because the kind of teachers needed to staff them cannot be produced overnight. Moreover, many planned improvements have had to be postponed to take care of England's unexpected postwar baby boom. Money and effort that was to have been put into raising the quality of education had to be spent on providing additional classrooms and teachers to take care of what the English call the "bulge." But with population growth back to normal, it will now be possible to build and equip more grammar schools and raise Secondary Modern School standards.

The English school system should be judged by its overall plan, not by temporary shortcomings which the English are doing their best to overcome as speedily as possible. When their plan has been fully put into effect, placement in a given secondary school will be by ability alone. And each type of secondary school will be fully de

veloped to serve the particular education needs of its pupils. As stated in a recent official Ministry of Education release, all schoolswill have the advantages and the amenities hitherto exclusively associated with the limited number of schools called secondary schools up to 1944. They will have equally good buildings. They will enjoy the same holidays and play the same games. In all the schools the studies will be related to the abilities and aptitudes of the pupils. The maximum size of classes will be the same for all. As a mere matter of finance, it will, broadly speaking, cost as much to build, equip, and staff one type of secondary school as another.

The only difference remaining will of course be the one intractable difference that is caused by differing human intellectual endowments.

It is just this difference that parents often cannot bring themselves to face. Separation of children into three different types of secondary schools disappointed many people in England who had believed implicitly what some politicians had promised: That the new educa tion act would provide "a free grammar education" for "every English child." The act used the expression "secondary education," not "grammar education" but, since at that time the only secondary school was the grammar school, many people were misled.

To persons who themselves possessed only an elementary education, the Grammar School appeared to be simply a school for the rich. They were not educated enough to understand that ability to pay fees never had guaranteed anyone a higher education unless he was also able and willing to keep up with the school's study program. They did no realize that a grammar education had prestige not because it cost money but because it was difficult to absorb and because it led to university entrance. Admit all children to Grammar School and it would simply become a Secondary Modern School parading under misleading name. But this was not understood.

The Lancashire Education Committee noted that to many people the new act meant "there would follow a miraculous transformation of the old elementary school pupils, so that their abilities and achieve ments would equal those of the grammar school child in the same fields of effort." Instead, the majority of England's children found themselves in the new Secondary Modern School upon which everyone at first looked with great mistrust. Fortunately, by the truly heroic efforts of England's devoted teachers, the Secondary Modern School have become very respectable schools, indeed, where good serious work is being done and standards are rising. Many of these schools are now housed in attractive buildings with playgrounds and all the special features English children and parents associate with a grammar education. It now happens occasionally that placement in a Grammar School is rejected in favor of placement in a Secondary Modern School Mr. CANNON. Admiral Rickover, could you give us some ides s to what is taught and accomplished in these three types of English secondary schools?

Admiral RICKOVER. I was just getting to this, sir. I would like to confine myself to the Grammar and the Secondary Modern School. leaving out the technical school which, as I said, has an academic program but with emphasis on mathematics and science and with s more practical approach than the Grammar School.

THE ENGLISH GRAMMAR SCHOOL SYSTEM

The English Grammar School has six forms, form being the English term for grade. During the first 5 years pupils study a wide range of subjects and there is little choice in programming. Toward the end of the third or the start of the fourth form, children usually begin to show preference or talent for one of the two major Grammar School courses: classics or modern. These are traditional terms and should be understood as indicating a linguistic-literary course and a mathematics-science course. I should add that a Grammar School "modernside" or mathematics-science course will differ from a technical school course in being more theoretical and hence more likely to produce research scientists, while the Technical School is more likely to produce engineers. This is the difference. On the Continent, incidentally, they have at least three different types of academic secondary school "classical," "semiclassical or modern language,' and "mathematics-science."

In the fourth form then, a child's program will be weighted somewhat on the side of his preferred subject but he will still take a broad range of subjects. At the end of the fifth form, at age 15-16, most Grammar School students will take an external examination in all subjects they have studied, the General Certificate of Education examination "ordinary" level, popularly called the GCE "O" level. Many students will end their general education at this point and enter a specialized school preparing for a profession or semiprofession or go to work. The English traditionally attend school for a shorter length of time than the continentals where children of similar aptitude and family background would normally continue at school to age 18.

Even in the private Grammer Schools, the so-called "public schools," such as Eton, Harrow, and so forth, only 33 percent of fifth formers will, on the average remain at school. These are England's richest, most privileged youth. They obviously drop out because they want to, not because they cannot afford to stay on. I think this will change, for in all countries there is today a great need for broadly educated people, and certainly the level of general education reached in the GCE "O" level is not as good as that reached by continental students who take the baccalaureat at age 18 to 19.

The schoolwork at Grammar School is divided into 35 class periods of about 40 minutes each. Twenty-seven of the periods are devoted entirely to academic subjects; the rest to music, art, religious instruction, and physical education. First formers will continue geometry which they have already studied in Primary School and they will start algebra. In the second, at latest the third form trigonometry is added. By age 15 those who lean toward the "modernside" will be well into calculus and coordinate geometry. Usually they will also have studied two foreign languages, the first begun at age 11, the second at 12. On the other hand, students with language preference may have added a third foreign language at age 13 but will not as a rule have gone as far as calculus.

All pupils study physics, chemistry, biology, history, and geography as separate subjects for several years, and carry these well beyond what is customary even in an honors high school program here. English and English literature are studied intensively. In foreign languages, incidentally, the private Grammar Schools, the so-called

"public" schools, such as Eton, Winchester, etc., are ahead of the state system. To be admitted into these private schools children must, at age 13, pass a very tough entrance examination. They will be tested in two foreign languages which they will have begun at ages 8 and 9, respectively.

GENERAL CERTIFICATE OF EDUCATION (GCE) EXAMINATION

It is easy to judge what students learn in Grammar School, since almost all of them take the General Certificate of Education examination. This examination is administered by university-connected bodies and comes at three levels: ordinary, advanced, and scholarship. The ordinary examination is normally taken at age 15-16, after completion of the fifth form; the other two at age 17-18, after completion of 2, sometimes 3, years in the sixth form. May I request permission to include samples of these examinations in the record?

Mr. CANNON. They will be included.

(The matter referred to is included as Annex 1.)

THE GCE EXAMINATIONS AND OUR COLLEGE BOARD EXAMINATIONS

Mr. CANNON. How would these GCE examinations compare with those submitted by our college boards?

Admiral RICKOVER. It is difficult to make a comparison. The level of the English GCE can be easily ascertained by studying the types of examination problems students must solve to obtain what the English call a "pass" in a given subject. No information is available in the United States on how many of the students who take college boards actually pass their tests. Results are given in percentiles which merely indicate where a student stands among those who took the test along with him. Recently it was widely reported that 70 percent of our colleges and universities now find it necessary to set up remedial courses in English, 150,000 freshmen having, so it is said. failed college entrance tests in English. It is not clear whether by "college entrance test" is meant the College Board English Achieve ment Test, taken last year by 204,000 students. I hope not. That would be a deplorable state of affairs.

It would be interesting to have the College Board Testing Service make a careful comparison of the GCE "ordinary" level and the college board achievement tests in the major academic subjects Of course, only about a third of those who take college boards take achievement tests, the rest merely take aptitude tests and these de not measure what students have achieved in the subjects taken st school.

Now the GCE is a written essay type achievement test which meas ures rather accurately what the student has learned about the par ticular subject in which he is tested and how good he is at applying his knowledge to the solution of test problems. College Board Achievement Tests allot 1 hour to each subject, English GCE "ord nary" level tests allot 2% to 3 hours. Normally, a Grammar School fifth former will take at least five to six subject tests while the American will take only three. A GCE of only three "passes" is a poor showing for a Grammar School student; only about 19 percent do that badly About 60 percent enter and pass a GCE in the whole range of subjects

English or English literature are compulsory for the GCE. Favorite combinations are English, mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, history, perhaps also geography or French. Or the combinations may be history, geography, mathematics, French, Latin, Greek, English language and literature. Students who stay on in the sixth form and later take the advanced and scholarship GCE, reserve their specialist subjects for that examination and take the ordinary level exam in the subjects they will no longer study in the sixth form.

I should perhaps mention that in recent years some of the abler Secondary Modern School children who stay on through the fifth form have been entering for the GCE ordinary exam and have obtained up to three "passes." Entering for the GCE "O" level exam is today no longer an exclusively Grammar School achievement.

To answer your question, I should say that a good GCE at ordinary level, taken at age 15-16, represents a higher scholastic achievement than an American College Board Achievement Test, taken at age 18. I have done some research to find out how many Americans take these easier tests, as compared to English children. Taking the year 1958, for which I happen to have complete information, this is the picture: Of 2.9 million American children enrolled in the first grade 12 years earlier, in 1946, only 1.45 million graduated from high school in 1958. Of these, somewhat less than half entered some sort of college; official figures vary between 685,000 and 781,000, probably because the term "college" is variously defined. The college aptitude test was taken by 240,000, the achievement test in three subjects by 115,000. Only the latter can be compared with the English GCE ordinary level examination. These 115,000 are 5 percent of the age group.

According to official figures 26.5 percent of the English 15-year-old age group are in the fifth form of a selective secondary school, that is, a Grammar or Technical School in the state system or a private academic secondary school. Approximately 60 percent pass the full course of GCE subjects in the ordinary level examination at age 15 to 16. This is roughly 16 percent compared to our 5 percent of the age group. England, it must always be remembered, has only a little under one quarter as many people as we. In the last few years the number of Americans taking achievement tests has increased, but so has the number of English children taking the GCE exam.

We do not know, of course, how many more young Americans could have successfully completed the College Board Achievement Test. We can only go by the number who did take it. Also, there are other tests that may be comparable to the GCE. Still, it is clear that fewer American 18-year-olds complete the kind of academic education that would be required to pass the GCE ordinary level examination, which is taken by English children at age 15-16. And this, to my mind, is proof that our bright youngsters do not receive nearly as good an education in our comprehensive school system as English bright children receive in their Grammar School.

Now as to comparing the GCE advanced and scholarship level examinations with some American test, we shall have to reach up to our bachelor's degree to find rough equivalence. The evidence seems to indicate that the higher GCE is a degree either equal to or only slightly below the average American bachelor's degree. To get an idea of what it stands for, I will describe the sixth form of the Grammar School.